


Shades

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Afterlife, Deathfic, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bethany Bolton awaits the vengeance she craved in life. </p><p>Inspired by a prompt on the asoiafkinkmeme, but I didn't really fill it in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades

**Author's Note:**

> I've included some of my favorite "dead Westerosi" in this fic, just for fun!

Bethany is watching her son groom his horse when she feels a hand on her sleeve. At another time, and in another life, she would have reached for a knife, either concealed in her sleeve, or thrust into her reticule, and brandished it. The Dreadfort was a dangerous place at times, and unsavory characters filled it at times. But she sees only the sweet, plain face of her goodbrother, his hands upraised in a gesture of surprise at her threatening expression. Willam Dustin had died at the Tower of Joy, they said, but she had paid him no mind, absorbed in her memories, a distant blur of redness and sorrow, or focused on Domeric, still incredulous to find him here, strong and whole. 

“I heard that you were coming,” she says, regaining control, her hands clasped modestly in front of her. “There were many who proceeded you.”

“And many to follow,” he replies. 

“How is my sister?” Bethany says. Barbrey is really the only person that she misses, caring little for wars and thrones. That is the business of the living, and she is past caring for it. But Barbrey will grieve, she knows, grieve for the quiet kindness of the husband that she never quite wanted but suffered anyway, helpless to his gentle ways and informal deference. “She will weep for you.”

“She will rage,” Willam replies.

Bethany nods, for in this, he is correct, and she forces a smile. It comes easily to her pale face. 

Time passes and she waits and she waits and she waits, keeping watch for a lumbering figure clad in finery, his ugliness magnified by the sumptuous clothing that he uses to compensate for his failings. She rages when she beholds his widow, healed from the wounds of her sad end, knowing what has transpired, digging nails into palms until her hands bleed as Donella’s did in a distant tower. She meets people who she had never known in life, and learns to call them friends, a slender woman in black armor whose eyes cause even Bethany to feel a chill, an auburn-haired girl who presses her close and commiserates on dead sons and cold wedding beds, a tall blonde woman from the south who is in bearing a queen though she lacks a crown. 

And she watches her son, denied so the happiness that he deserved in life, laughing with other shades, chasing a wolfgirl through a forest on horseback, granting a thickset boy clad in blue and silver the right to carry his sword and squire for a trueborn Bolton.

And yet, she is not happy. Blood has been denied her. Bethany polishes the blade that remains to her, hones it, keeps it well. She thinks not of her husband, but of his sins, of what she had always considered his great mistake, and his undoing.

He does not come. He does not come. But when he does, she will be ready.


End file.
